


Pinioned

by TheWaffleBat



Series: Crow [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Family Bonding, Gen, Poisoning, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, also not much just be aware, but it's going to get worse before it gets better, but still, not graphic, sorry Corvo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-08-23 19:38:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16625186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWaffleBat/pseuds/TheWaffleBat
Summary: Corvo didn’t draw his sword, or lift his crossbow, at the sight of someone unfamiliar. At least, Samuel hoped it was Corvo - the man was a watery impression of the one who glared out from the wanted posters, his dark eyes more bleary than malevolent, his frame more pathetic than intimidating. He was a man, clearly, who was diminished terribly.Coldridge left more than wounds on Corvo, but at least his daughter and an old man of the river are there to help.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold, the sequel to Fledgling! It isn't necessary to read it if you don't want, but this does allude to some allusions made in it.

Samuel had carried the box for a few hours through the sewer, dodging the corpses of Weepers left propped up against the wall or floating, eerie and bloated, in the water. Havelock had gone through to make sure that it was safe for Samuel, calmly putting down the shambling, living corpses. But there was always a chance that more would have cropped up, desperate for a warm corner to curl up and die in, and Samuel didn’t _want_ to hurt them, there were people inside them somewhere; he kept his revolver unholstered, just in case.

But there was no sign of anything more dangerous than a rat or two that hissed at his boots, and Samuel made it back to his boat with no danger. Just the way he preferred. He wondered how long he would have to wait, staring out across the water - would he see Corvo come sundown this day, or in three days? Would he even see Corvo at all?

He sat in his boat, lulled by the gentle rocking. To sit and stare across the water, watching the gulls wheel and shriek overhead, diving for fish and occasionally become victims of the hagfish infesting the Wrenhaven, was nothing new to him. It was a familiar thing, like the cigarette between his lips, dangling from the v of his fingers, was familiar. It was no chore to lean back and doze; not sleep, too exposed, too insecure, for sleep. But rest was good, and he had food and drink for a week if he needed to wait that long.

The sun rose and fell, staining the murky water with its cloud-grim colours, and Corvo did not show.

That was alright. Coldridge stored the most dangerous prisoners for a reason, after all, and the sewers _were_ expansive, and probably teeming with guards by now. Even Havelock had murmured some doubts about getting Corvo out, though his worries mostly centered on Corvo’s mental state and whether or not he was fit to be of use.

Samuel set up a bedroll just inside the mouth of the tunnel, on some pipes that kept him suspended from the floor, and tacked up a thick oilcloth to keep out the worst of the rain beginning to splatter down from the dark clouds. Another, larger sheet he used to protect his boat, and he dragged over a nearby grill and supply of faintly mouldy firewood to get some dinner going. If Corvo was going to show, then he better do it in the morning.

He woke to the sun just peeking through the clouds, unharmed and his night having been completely absent of any weepers. Still no Corvo, but an announcement was booming across the water: “Corvo Attano has escaped Coldridge prison” and the news didn’t change for the three subsequent days, so at least the man hadn’t been re-apprehended in the interim. Samuel did have to wonder what kind of man he was going to turn out to be, though.

Samuel wasn’t, after all, entirely certain he hadn’t actually killed Empress Jessamine, mercy on her soul. He didn’t think Corvo had abducted Emily - that seemed too convenient for the new Regent - but a lot of men would do a lot of things for power - history was full of them. It was part of the reason Samuel didn’t regret never angling for captaincy, or admiralty if he’d been ambitious. Or perhaps Corvo was infected with the plague, advanced to the point of irrational, defensive anger and _that_ was why he’d turned on his charge.

Or maybe none of it was true, and maybe Corvo was a victim too, helpless to watch the butchering of someone everyone said he loved more than his own life. Maybe Corvo had just been in the right place at the wrong time, and the regent thought he was a good scapegoat in the increasing backlash against his more brutal methods to managing the plague.

Samuel didn’t know. He decided he’d make a judgment when he heard Corvo’s side of the story. In the meanwhile, watching the shadow of the sunrise from his boat, he crunched through a few bruised Morley apples, tossing the cores to the fish.

A bottle smashed. It sounded from deep in the tunnel, much too close for comfort, and Samuel stood from his boat, stepping onto the concrete. Something was stumbling towards him from the dark. Samuel only noticed it because the footsteps were heavy, and because he was listening out for footsteps. It was a shambling, lurching thing, whatever it was - there was the faintest _clink_ of weapons, too, on every half-step. A sudden, jarring _clang_ as whoever it was fell against the pipes. An ill guardsman? A _wounded_ guardsman, fresh from a fight with someone? Water was dripping wetly to the concrete, echoing loudly, from whoever it was.

The revolver was a comforting weight in his hand. Samuel clicked the safety off, but didn’t raise it.

Someone shuffled out into the light, drowning in the clothes Pendleton had commissioned for Corvo; pulling the thick, dark blue overcoat tightly around his shoulders. He was hiding beneath greasy, ragged hair matted to his skull, but Samuel saw him wince from the light, heard him breathing wetly even across the span between them. He was terribly unkempt, misery written into every jagged line; he hunched around the arm he had wrapped around his ribs trembling a little and shock-eyed from pain. Blood dripped from the hand he had pressed to a wound.

Corvo didn’t draw his sword, or lift his crossbow, at the sight of someone unfamiliar. At least, Samuel hoped it was Corvo - the man was a watery impression of the one who glared out from the posters and newspaper, his dark eyes more bleary than malevolent, his frame more pathetic than intimidating. He was a man, clearly, who was diminished terribly. Still, better check.

“Corvo?” Samuel called and yes, the faintest spark of recognition when Corvo flinched away from the sound of his own name. “I’m a friend.”

Suddenly, to think that Corvo could have killed anyone at all was absurd. The poor thing looked more like an abandoned, once-beloved pet, all straggly and ill and confused; desperate for a friendly hand but never knowing which one that was. Like he’d blunted all his teeth chewing through the bars, toothless from the effort to keep trying; like even life itself was dulled in him, a candle near to burned out but still somehow glowing weakly. The only thing that seemed to keep it burning was the sting of torture glowing redly from the burn on his jaw, the shallow cut on his ribs that spilled droplets echoing _plink_ down the sewer.

His chest hurt from pity. “I’m Samuel,” He said gently, turning the safety back on and holstering his revolver as he stepped further onto the muddy bank, “And I work for some people who very much want to meet you. I’ll take you to them, just down the river.”

That, finally, seemed to get Corvo’s attention. He nodded slowly, Samuel’s head throbbing with sympathy for the effort it clearly cost him, and Corvo stumbled into the boat.

Samuel watched him brace against the side less, he suspected, for some imagined security and more because he was so weak that he could barely keep himself upright. It seemed a miracle that Corvo had reached him at all, and yet there he was, shivering and shuddering and frightened; flinching from the lash of briny river-water in his face when Samuel got the boat moving, hissing with every jolt of his wounds.

His weary eyes spoke of a bone-deep kind of exhaustion, but their wary, unblinking watching of Samuel at the tiller spoke of a deeper need for security, first. There was nothing but time that would get Corvo to trust him, but there was always a certain way to get an animal to at least lose the defensiveness, and Samuel thought the hungry-dog gauntness of Corvo would make him work in the same way.

“Got some food leftover in that bag there,” Samuel told him. “We’ll have to keep out of sight of some of the bigger ships, so it’ll be a while getting to our friends. Eat,” Samuel said.

Corvo, having picked up the bag, stared into its depths. He ate. Slowly, at first, like he wasn’t sure if he should trust that it was real or not, and then he bolted it down, curled over it like a dog with a bone. He gnawed through the stale loaf of bread Samuel had considered throwing overboard, no reservation in his face as he took the first bite.

Samuel watched him with increasing sympathy. There was a fresh, half-scarred and shiny-pink burn on his jaw and an angry red, openly bleeding welt splitting his cheek that cut through his lips. Corvo’s hands trembled; when the sleeves fell low around his arms his wrists were rubbed raw in the shape of manacles, and a neat ladder of scars went down his forearms, making islands of their thick, dark hair.

Havelock’s concerns over Corvo’s mental state were well founded, Samuel thought, but maybe not in the way he’d envisioned. Other than the suspicious way he kept an eye on Samuel, he seemed devoid of anything even remotely violent. There were pieces here and there, in the way he kept a hand on the hilt of his sword, hovering over the crossbow strapped to his back, but they all seemed remote from one another, scattered across a ruined landscape that Corvo was too tired and worn down and ill to track. Less a man and more an animal too beaten down to fight anymore - other than a snarling grimace, Corvo did nothing to fight off Samuel’s steadying grip of his shoulder when the Amaranth broke through a wave that made them bounce particularly high.

Across the hours they spent travelling the Wrenhaven, Corvo nursed a coppery elixir, sipping slowly. His nose wrinkled from the taste, but still his eyes stayed dull and disinterested in the world around him. He didn’t seem to notice when a cut over his eye started bleeding.

Finally, _finally_ , the Hound Pits came into view, so Samuel brought the boat closer to the banks and guided her the rest of the way by a rope the admiral tossed to him. “Here we are,” Said Samuel, glaring at Havelock and Pendleton on the dock because they were _meant_ to give Corvo the night to at least rest a bit before they started in on the preaching. By Pendleton’s wrinkled nose, he seemed to want that now too.

Corvo was at least slightly more coordinated getting out of the boat than he had been getting in, but there was still a worrying limp when he trailed after the admiral. Blood still dripped from nerveless fingers, streaming down the wet tracks left in his coat and falling from the hem. Samuel motioned over Lydia, and said in an undertone, “Piero put locks on his doors?”

“Yes,” She answered, just as quietly. “He’ll get the key now.”

They watched Piero hand over the grinning mask, then the simple iron key that Corvo clutched tightly. Samuel nodded sharply. “Make sure he eats? He looks like he’s going to collapse any second now.”

“I’ll take him some of tonight’s stew.” Her mouth went very thin, and very white. “I don’t think he’ll keep it down, though. He doesn’t look like he’s eaten for weeks, and I know people like that can’t keep much more’n water.”

“Try him,” Said Samuel, clapping a friendly arm on her bony shoulder. “It’s not like he’ll get much worse, is it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally was three chapters, but can you tell I love Samuel? Because I love Samuel, and he deserves to be written about more so five chapters it is. The entire series is pre-written and if all goes to plan there'll be an update fairly regularly.


	2. Chapter 2

Corvo did get worse - much, much worse. His breathing was still wet, and he coughed intermittently, but it wasn’t the bloodied, stringy phlegm the Weepers hacked up, so that was at least something. Unfortunately anything stronger than a watery stock made him be sick for hours, curled over a bowl as bile and then, eventually, nothing came back up.

They took turns watching over him, though Pendleton sneered and said it wasn’t his station to babysit so Havelock did it for him instead. Only the once, though, because Corvo was a man weakened but he was still lethal. Wallace and the rest of the staff did too and Corvo, mostly, accepted them in his room as long as they didn’t touch him. It became abundantly clear, very quickly, that Corvo was not going to tolerate them very long; he didn’t lash out in surprise like he had for Havelock, the one and only time the man went into the room to check on him, but he did go frighteningly, deathly still whenever anyone touched him.

Samuel sat with him, then. It wasn’t sea-sickness that affected him, but nausea was nausea and Samuel knew how to help with it just the same. He kept up a steady, soothing stream of nonsense, rubbing Corvo’s back through the thin shirt he’d forced himself into and feeling scars bump against his palm. He told stories from his days on the river, of some of the monsters he’d seen beneath the water.

Instead of the bread that had triggered this particular bout, Samuel offered a glass of water Piero had mixed with some elixir, staining it pink, and some herbal remedy he insisted would help Corvo’s body accept food. After a few hours, where Corvo curled up miserably in his bed and looked like he very much wished he’d stayed in his cell and been executed, Samuel gave him a thin, flavourless cracker. It wasn’t much, but Corvo kept it down.

On his better days he moved through the pub like a ghost, always walking along the pipes or the rooftops, or stood high up on scaffolding beams like a particularly scruffy bird. Always just out of sight, unless he didn’t care if he was seen.

Samuel didn’t much mind him. There was something nice about Corvo fluttering about overhead, darting from perch to perch like bird re-learning to fly. And he was always there to gently redirect the few Weepers that wandered into the Loyalist camp, leading them away with glass inexplicably smashed, or even just baiting them. When he tired - and he tired not as quickly as other men, but certainly much faster than he used to, given the annoyed hisses that came from between his teeth every time he staggered to the ground - Corvo sat with him, silent. He was a good listener, ducking beneath the overhanging eaves of his little shack and keeping vigil; there was no disgust in his eyes when Samuel, in bits and pieces, told him the story of a man with eyes the blue of a Pandyssian sea and skin the gold of pale whiskey.

Today the rain had driven them all in from the outside, and they all milled about damply while trying and failing to not watch Corvo like he might go suddenly rabid and kill everyone. It certainly wasn’t an unfair fear - Corvo’s head wound, which didn’t seem to heal very well no matter how many medicines Piero smeared across it, had reopened again, and the rain had washed the blood down his face until he looked like he’d been weeping.

He might also have regained the ability to eat, but his appetite was still elusive and Corvo was as gaunt and haunted as he’d been four weeks ago, dun skin washed out into a sickly, deathly pallor. His hair, clean now, had been hacked to pieces because Corvo had given up trying to brush out the matting, and now it hung limp and tufted around his face.

But, more than anything, Corvo still looked pitiable. Beneath the clinging, soggy shirt he was bony and hungry, ribs pressing against his skin with each breath. All the scars, all the torture he’d been subjected to, was written messily into his body, angry red and barely softened by the wet cotton that stuck to it. Samuel didn’t think they were the kind of wounds to ache in the cold, or else Corvo didn’t feel anything anymore.

Havelock, visibly steeling himself and holding out an offering of bread and cheese, sat down at Corvo’s booth. “How are you, Corvo?” Said Havelock pleasantly. Corvo, dulled eyes taking a second to flick to him, shrugged. Havelock was undeterred. “High Overseer Campbell,” Said Havelock, “Might be the key to rescuing Emily. He carries a small black book that might have the information we need to find her. If you’re well enough, we need you to go and retrieve that book, rescue an overseer loyal to our cause named Martin, and eliminate Campbell.”

Samuel watched, fascinated, as Havelock in two minutes did what even he - the only one Corvo didn’t flinch from - hadn’t been able to do. Corvo’s dark eyes lit up, finally engaging with them, and a low, eager hiss rattled from his throat. He quivered like an excitable hound at the sound of the little empress’ name.

Corvo didn’t speak - Samuel suspected that he couldn’t - but nodded, sharply. Ignoring the offered food he took up sword and crossbow and dashed back out into the rain. Moments later they heard several, heavy _thunks_ as training dummies crashed wetly to the floor. Havelock leaned back in satisfaction, and said to a dumbfounded Pendleton, “Time only gets us so far with men like him. He needs to do what he’s been trained for, or he’ll cut his own throat.”

-:-

Callista clearly hadn’t expected her impassioned plea to come to anything, but the joy on her face when her uncle sent her a letter was a pleasure to witness, and Samuel noticed Corvo, back up in his customary place on the iron beams, had a tiny, proud smile on his face. It was a surprise to everyone that Campbell was left alive, branded, but not even Havelock could deny its effectiveness - he didn’t clap a hand on Corvo’s shoulder in congratulations, everyone knew he would have been stabbed for the effort, but he beamed like he very much wanted to.

The next day, and the day after and the day after and the day after, he sent Corvo out, whittling down the guard captains and generals and overseers who were loyal to Burrows while at the pub they tried decoding the little black book.

-:-

Mercy, of a kind, seemed a recurring pattern for Corvo.

Samuel got a cheap newspaper from a dealer who lived out on the water and that every riverman knew to go to for gossip; a short, squat little man who looked more like a moustached frog than a person. Samuel leaned against the railing of his boat while Wilkins pottered about on deck, gathering Samuel’s usual order.

“You heard about that ‘Masked Felon’ by any chance?” Said Wilkins conversationally, clearly angling for something. “The one who’s bin tweaking the bigwigs’ noses?”

Samuel, who knew more about him than Wilkins would ever be privy to, up to and including knowing that Corvo had a weakness for apricot tarts, wolfhounds, and honest to the Outsider _rats_ , answered, “Not really. Didn’t he go after the high overseer?”

Wilkins was clearly torn between deflating from the lack of new gossip and puffing out, proud of how much more he knew than Samuel. He settled on an incongruous mix of the two, somehow. “Word on the street is ‘e’s some sort of ghost. Death, they call him. Bullshit - man ain’t killed anyone yet. Not even the guards, just moseys on past ‘em like they ain’t even there. Ghostly. No one’s even seen ‘im properly - just a few glimpses of this black skull mask.”

“Odd,” Samuel murmured, browsing the front page Wilkins handed down to him, dated a few weeks before.

MASKED TERROR STALKING DUNWALL STREETS, blared the headline, and beneath it a fairly rudimentary drawing of Corvo’s mask had been printed, grinning unsettlingly wide. REPORT ALL SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY TO THE CITY WATCH.

“‘E’s got ‘em scared,” Wilkins continued, his greasy face beaming delight like it was an enormous practical joke that he was in on. “If he’d killed anyone then they’d know what to do, won’ they? Just lock him up and boom, bullet to his brain. But other’n a few people waking up on roofs or in bins, we ain’t been touched, like he don’t care about us.”

Samuel handed the paper back, and Wilkins’ face disappeared. “What do you think he’s after, then? Can’t just be causing havoc for the sake of it.”

Emily. The only thing he’d ever said to them, written in lines of salt across the table with such an awful kind of need and fear shining from his face that Samuel’s heart had yanked in his chest. His child, his little girl; probably the only reason he was still alive, had taken up the key they’d slipped him and escaped. If she’d died, then Samuel was certain Corvo would be long dead perhaps not by his own hand, but certainly without him preventing it.

“I think,” Wilkins murmured, leaning down conspiratorially, “It’s Corvo, come back to haunt us. I think Burrows had him killed all quiet-like, ‘cause he was afraid of ‘im - who isn’t? - and now the Outsider’s sent him back to punish us. They found no body, Sam,” Said Wilkins, seeing Samuel’s disbelieving look, “No corpse, not even a weeper. Just a trail of blood through the sewers and some guards with bruises on their throats, sleepin’ on the pipes. _He jumped from the bridge_ \- ain’t no one survives that.”

Well, Samuel supposed, Corvo very nearly hadn’t survived it. He still avoided the water as much as he could, and Lydia said he only filled the bath enough to cover his legs. He tucked the beer and cigarettes underneath his seat and bit deeply into his toast. “Just seems odd though, why go after them instead of getting to the empress?”

Wilkins shrugged, delighted by the ability to share even more intrigue. “Who knows how a man like that thinks? He’s been a scary fucker since he got here, hear the story? Gift from the Serkonos duke; they say he was a street rat, made to fight in the Verbena by some noble that figured he’d make a prettier soldier than a corpse. Once he got here? Well, I heard tell that Euhorn used him as a personal spy.” He grinned, a little lecherously. “They say he was devoted; anything and everything for the emperor. Former guard said he’d go in and out of the royal chambers all night.”

“Interesting,” Murmured Samuel, pretending that he didn’t violently wish he hadn’t asked. It wasn’t right that he knew things about Corvo that he’d clearly meant to keep private. It wasn’t his place to know.

“There was a _lot_ of stuff people said he’s done for the royals,” Continued Wilkins, happily waving his hands. “Sometimes it was nobles just up and disappearing, sometimes it was them agreeing with stuff they’d shot down the day before. Morley nationalists, poor bastard, suddenly bein’ found and taken prisoner. Lotta of weird things, Sam.”

“Any spy would do the same,” Samuel answered, brushing crumbs from his hands. “Euhorn was clearly right to trust him that much.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Said Wilkins impatiently. “But doing all that, and no one even knows for sure it’s him? I think Corvo ain’t even a man at all - I think he’s witchstuff. Some spirit made by magic that some witch made to serve her. And now the spell’s fucking up, an’ Dunwall’s paying for it.”

“If it was a spell, then why would he turn on Empress Jessamine, rest her soul? Magic like that doesn’t seem like it’d go wrong, not this long after it was cast. If he was bound to service, wouldn’t he have kept that up?” Said Samuel reasonably. He’d seen Corvo - held him, nursed him through the worst of his post-Coldridge weakness, watched him bleed and vomit and hop around on one foot after stubbing his toe; he was made of the same flesh and bone as the rest of them, very much living and certainly not smelling of sea-salt and the Void’s ozone smell singing from his blood like whale-song.

He was just different - made different by things he’d done, the people who chose him and left their marks like the one tattooed on the back of his hand that flared gold-blue when magic thundered through him. But who was Samuel to judge, when seemingly loyal service to the Leviathan hadn’t changed him for the worse? Corvo was still just a man, still searching for a lost ward who meant everything to him.

Wilkins grunted a soft, defeated, “I guess.” He milled around while Samuel, dissatisfied by his packing, reordered his items. Wilkins had more to say. “You know no one’s heard him speak? Not one word from his mouth. Somethin’ wrong with his throat, or something, ‘cause of Karnaca. Lotta fucked up people in the Dust District, an’ I heard a sailor years ago sayin’ some freak was goin’ around killin’ kids; only caught, they said, ‘cause one of em’ survived and drew a picture for the guards. Think it might be Corvo? Somethin’ like that’s gotta fuck you up badly.”

“I suppose it’s not unreasonable. Bit unlikely, though,” Samuel told Wilkins mildly, because it wasn’t his job to gossip and speculate and theorize about Corvo’s tragic past. He was just the boatman, one among many who just had the good luck to know him, no more than that. He started up his boat.

“Let me know if you hear somethin’ interesting about ‘im!” Wilkins called.

Samuel wasn’t going to do that, ever, but Wilkins didn’t know that, or need to know it. Corvo didn’t need to be talked about any more than he already was, even if it was mostly connected to his mask instead of his face. And anyway, they had a brothel to get to, Pendleton’s brothers to kill, and an empress to rescue; Corvo had been on tenterhooks, bouncing on his feet, ever since Havelock had said they were getting close to decoding the notes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, Corvo self harms a little. It's not graphic, mostly just him scratching his arm up until he bleeds, but it is there so be warned.

Little Emily was a delight to have at the Hound Pits.

Oh, she caused Callista no end of grief, always dashing away at the first opportunity to escape a lesson she thought was boring - particularly etiquette, and that always made Samuel chuckle to himself because Emily was a polite little girl, most of the time, but she always said the wrong thing at the right time; hilariously awkward for their frequent victims Martin and Havelock. But she was a good kid, on the whole, and didn’t cause much trouble for anyone.

But for Corvo, Outsider’s eyes, it was like he was a different man entirely, like some part of his soul had been given back to him. He never turned her away, never barred her from his room, even if she was only there to evade Callista. There was genuine interest when she showed him drawings - he gave her pins to tack them up on the walls - and even more genuine love shining from his severe face every time he looked at her.

And he looked at Emily like she’d hung the moon and painted the stars, like her slightly off-key singing was the finest divine choir. It was clear that Corvo would have done anything for her, would have ripped his way through Dunwall, ghost-like and unknowable, to find her even without gratitude tying his cause to theirs.

Now that he had her back the desperate grief and fury that drove him seemed to die out, and Corvo had settled into something more human - he wasn’t like a wolfhound anymore, hungry and snarling and always searching for its master. He smiled, just a tiny shift at the corner of his mouth and creasing his eyes, but there all the same; he ate more, too, partly because he finally seemed well enough for it and partly because he needed to set a good example for Emily. Even if he, too, made faces at his vegetables.

But the Boyles’ party seemed to undo all that good. Samuel found Corvo not on the beams or the rooftops or the pipes, but on the ground in his room.

That was an odd enough occurrence on its own, even without it being the middle of night, pitch black save for the weak flicker of a candle on his bedside table. He was sat on the ground, little empress on his knee, and shaking; as indistinct as any wisp. “Corvo!” Said Emily, distressed and only making Corvo tremble all the more guiltily. “Corvo, what’s wrong?”

Corvo shook his ragged head, just barely sucking in a breath of air. Samuel crept a little further into his room, and fell back against the wall; Corvo was _crying_ \- fat tears rolling down his face, shiny and wet, and he gasped horrible, soundless sobs, just barely keeping things hidden behind the hand he’d clamped over his mouth. No matter how hard his throat worked, no matter how hard he screamed into his palm, nothing except a wheezy little whine came from his chest, deep and tinny like from a broken radio.

He was mouthing to her, desperate. _Emily, Emily, Emily_ , and something that must have been _I love you_ , like he needed to say it infinitely more than she needed to hear it. Like all the times he’d been called a monster for doing something he didn’t, for bearing witness to something that had blown open his ribs and tore apart his heart, had come crashing down all at once and he needed to remind Emily that he loved her far more than he’d ever cared about himself before suspicion could take root.

His hands leapt into motions Samuel couldn’t read, couldn’t understand even if he was face-to-face with Corvo, but Emily could read their messy, jerky shapes and she launched herself into Corvo’s arms, “I missed you too,” She said, rocking him back and forth as he buried his face into her hair.

It was the only thing Samuel had seen him say, maybe the only thing Corvo had dreamed of telling her, all these long months he’d dragged himself through, desperate to die and desperate to find his daughter again, to have her alive and safe and in her proper place, beside him. Or maybe there was nothing else Corvo could think to say, lost and rudderless in a storm without Jessamine by his side, cast adrift in a city that wasn’t kind to people different in the way he was different.

Hearing that Emily had missed him too only made Corvo break down more, sobbing so hard he wasn’t breathing, curled in on himself like he’d be safe if he could just shut out his own suffering, his own acute misery.  The poor girl looked just as lost as Samuel felt, watching Corvo shred himself to pieces even though prison had failed at the same.

Samuel shouldn’t be watching. He _really_ shouldn’t have been watching, not this thing between the two of them, not Corvo finally, _finally_ realising he wasn’t okay, he wasn’t coping, and that he needed help because he didn’t feel safe.

Corvo pressed a hand back to his mouth, howling soundlessly into his palm - his throat worked, Adam’s apple bobbing along that long column, and nothing came out. The nails of his other hand, Samuel realised, were digging into his forearm, drawing blood as he clawed and screamed and only Emily was there to help, helpless to know what to do but trying to wrestle him down, and Samuel couldn’t stand idly for _that_.

Emily jumped up like she’d been caught skipping lessons when Samuel stalked forward and hauled Corvo up, but he didn’t pay her much mind as he braced for the inevitable fight that just. It didn’t come; Corvo just hung limp in his grasp, hiding his tears behind his hacked-to-buggery hair like he should be ashamed of them. There was fear, too, in the way he turned his head away, eyes squeezed shut as he stopped breathing entirely.

“Easy now,” Said Samuel, because the navy had been full of men like Corvo, men who saw things or experienced things no one should ever have to see or experience. “Easy Corvo, it’s alright. Just me. Just Samuel.”

A shudder, all down the length of his spine, and just like that Corvo was hugging him, pulling him close in a desperate need for comfort in a way Samuel suspected he hadn’t done since he was very small, newly silenced. But Samuel could give comfort, was better at it than flowery words, so he sat on the narrow, rickety bed and pulled Corvo into his side, all six foot something of him wedged into the smallest possible space; curled up and hugging his legs to his chest, face buried into his knees.

Blood stained his sleeping-trousers, but that was the least of Corvo’s troubles. Emily Samuel tucked into his other side, squeezing her close just for a moment, before letting her go. “It’s late,” He said gently. “Go on, off to bed.”

“But Corvo-” She said, making a needy, clutching gesture towards him even as, reluctantly, she slid from the bed.

“Let me take care of him,” Samuel told her, more sternly than he should probably sound but worry was curling tight and anxious around his heart, and sod it, Corvo needed him more than she did. “You won’t do him any favours staying up past your bedtime and making him worry. I know what to do, go on.”

He didn’t, actually, know what to do. He just knew how to keep Corvo even a little bit grounded, a little bit himself, and Emily must have known that; her chin jerked upwards stubbornly. “What’s wrong with him?”

Ack, this wasn’t a topic for little girls worried about their dad. “Coldridge,” He murmured carefully, shortly. “They hurt him. Badly.”

She was a little girl, yes, but she was too clever by half, too much like Corvo in the way she lurked and hid and dashed about, learning to climb and run and jump from pipes to scaffolding to roofs. Emily knew what he was saying, not in form but certainly in spirit because half a year at the Golden Cat meant she knew some of the ways people hurt one another. Biting her lip, and with one last look at Corvo still sheltering beneath Samuel’s wing, she nodded, and left; trotting across the walkway between Corvo’s room and her tower.

Alone, with a man who was recklessly throwing himself against an empire not because he wanted to die but because he didn’t care what happened to him, and his body was best put to use securing the reign of his daughter even if he died in the attempt. Poor bastard, Samuel thought, chafing his hand up and down Corvo’s arm. “Easy now, Corvo. Tell me what’s wrong. What brought that on?”

Corvo shrugged, still hiding. “Was it Lady Boyle?” Nothing, which meant that even if she wasn’t the cause directly, the mood he’d been in after she’d ‘left early by boat’ hadn’t actually dissipated like he’d thought it did. “Was it something Emily did?”

_No_ , said Corvo, which was at least a good sign. Samuel would make sure to let the little lady know tomorrow, before they set out. Reassurance, at least, that she hadn’t done anything wrong.

Before Samuel spoke again, before he’d even thought of something else to ask, Corvo slid from his hold and reached under the bed, pulling out a tattered old journal. Corvo handed it to him, and sat staring at the wall, back to Samuel. He wondered if Corvo had found it back when Havelock sent him to deal with Campbell.

It had been a fine thing once, clearly. The cover had an embossed _Corvo Attano_ that still had traces of gilding. He glanced at the first page, and felt his eyebrows creep upwards because all it said was _I appreciate the notes, but writing them on old newspaper makes it too difficult to read them,_  Signed, _Euhorn_. Everyone knew Corvo had been in Euhorn’s service for the two years prior to becoming Lord Protector, though the jury was still out over whether or not it was as a guard or as a spy, but to get a personal gift from the emperor?

He had been a spy - a good one too, it seemed. Corvo’s handwriting was messy, heavily slanted to the right, but his notes were neat. Little checklists of things to do or buy, ledgers on what he had in stock. Bullet points of observations and theories, some crossed out but most of the last ones underlined several times. The names of the people or groups he’d been investigating almost always had either a _neutralised_ next to it or a _harmless_. Sometimes Euhorn’s distinctive, elegant script filled up the scant few places left either with praise or with further instructions. Those notes continued even after he’d become Royal Protector, though the dates were fewer and farther in between and Jessamine’s writing filled the spaces in place of her father’s.

After notes detailing his failure oversea, dated the week before Jessamine’s death, there was only a handful of pages, all of them screaming.

_I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED I FAILED_ , took up the first page. The second had much the same, except that Corvo had also scrawled across it, _I’M SORRY_ , multiple times, so hard he nearly tore through the paper.

The third, and last, page was taken up less by howling grief chewing through the raw wounds of his heart, and more by disjointed ramblings about how he was sorry, he was a failure, he shouldn’t have left, he knew Burrows couldn’t be trusted. Why did she send him away? He loved her even though he didn’t want to, even though being with her had made him happier than he could ever remember and more unhappy at the same time. He’d wanted it all to stop because fucking her felt good but it was _wrong_ , he shouldn't have. He was sorry, so so so sorry he failed, he was doing his best, he had Emily back but it was hard because all he could remember was walls and bars and hurt and he didn’t want to inflict that on her, but it was so hard to smile for her too.

Tears had smeared some of the words slightly. A few more were blotted out completely by droplets of blood, or rusted fingerprints. The page was a little crumpled, too; creased at the edges, and _sorry_ and _love_ and _failed_ had been written so hard his pen had stabbed through.

Proof, thought Samuel humourlessly, that Corvo hadn’t killed her, as if he’d needed that for a long time. No one could write with such guilt, bleed out so much of his own soul, his own suffering, onto a page and have killed its source. It told Samuel absolutely nothing about how to make any of it right, but knowing the problem was half the battle. “It was getting too much for you,” Samuel said needlessly. “Havelock was asking you to do too much, too soon.”

Corvo shrugged, shoulders up around his ears. He was peeling back his stained sleeve before the blood could turn tacky and make the cotton cling to his wound. Samuel closed the journal and set it carefully back in its place under the bed and, groaning as his joints popped, he stood and got some clean towels, bandages, and a basin of warm water from Corvo’s bathroom. Callista had kept them stocked in there ever since Corvo had come down into the pub clean-shaven, but with an enormous cut on his face that he’d somehow not noticed giving himself.

When he came back, Corvo had turned around; still with his knees to his chest, like a small child, but freely offering his arm when Samuel sat back down. It bled sluggishly, but it hadn’t gone too deep, so Corvo would be fine. The water bloomed a rusty pink as Samuel washed, politely ignoring the age-old scars Corvo had inflicted on himself long before prison, and when he bandaged it the linen stayed white.

And then there was nothing to do except let Corvo nuzzle his way back into a cuddle, head pillowed on Samuel’s leg. Samuel didn’t say that his outburst had worried Emily - that was just cruel, however true - but there wasn’t much else he _could_ say. ‘You should have told me you were struggling’ seemed far too accusatory, and unfair given that they’d only known each other for four months. ‘It’s alright’ just sounded impersonal - trite - because nothing about this was alright.

_S O R R Y_ , wrote Corvo onto his knee.

“For what?”

He shrugged. Samuel, carefully, let his hand rest against Corvo’s hair, rubbing his thumb along the rat’s nest locks. “You’ve done nothing to be sorry for. Just… My shack is always open to you, if you need it. Don’t think I’ll turn you out into the cold.”

Corvo just sighed, and didn’t move even when Samuel gently slid from beneath him to go back to his own bed.


	4. Chapter 4

Emily chattered quietly to him in her favourite booth, expounding the many virtues of dragons over griffins in a fight, especially in regard to their fire breath, armoured hide, and big leathery wings that, she said, made them more manoeuvrable. Something about greater control and flexibility of bat wings over feathers, with a larger range of movement. She sounded especially like Sokolov.

Samuel suspected, of course, that Emily favoured this particular booth so highly because _Corvo_ favoured it, and while they all noted that Corvo was especially attentive to the little empress' needs, Samuel knew that Emily was equally careful to keep Corvo happy. The booth was an out of the way one, with a good view of almost the entire pub, and let Corvo sit in the corners where he was most comfortable. Defensible, without making it obvious that Corvo _needed_ it to be defensible.

“What about sea serpents?” Said Samuel reasonably, pointing to a fairly good rendition of one in the spread of drawings across the table. “They’re the dragons of the sea, and if the rest of the Isles uses its navy to attack Gristol, then maybe dragons won’t get to them in time.”

Emily tilted her head, considering. “No,” She decided, “Dragons can _fly_. They could take soldiers all the way to the capitals and take over for me. And sea serpents can’t burn things, and what if they need to get to the middle of an island? I don’t think they’d like swimming through rivers.”

“Fair enough,” Samuel told her agreeably. She wasn’t wrong. He pointed to another monster - a harpy. “What about this one? If the dragons are your sky cavalry, what does that make them?”

She peered intently at them, tongue poking through the corner of her mouth. “Infantry,” She said.

There was another monster, something between a dragon and a massive boulder, with tiny wings flapping like bees’ wings and a long tail like scorpions’, but instead of a stinger it had a molten ball of rock. “Is this one like a catapult then?”

Emily nodded, immensely pleased that he was finally starting to understand her future army. “He can’t fly very well,” She explained, “So the others have to keep him safe. But he can throw those boulders from his tail like a Pandyssian insect Sokolov told me he saw. He said they make this little ball of goo on the end of their tails and they can throw at things that frighten them, and he said it was like being hit by boiling water. Do you think Corvo would like him?”

Samuel, absolutely certain that Corvo was happy with whatever monster she came up with as long as it wasn’t real, near her, or threatening her, said slowly, “Yes, I think so. But maybe he’d like someone a little more like him, like that one.” He pointed to one that looked like an enormous, people-sized crow gliding across a street from lamp post to lamp post, a crossbow on its back firing what was obviously sleep darts. “Dragons and harpies are good at conquering places, but every empress needs someone to make sure she’s safe.”

She nodded slowly, biting her lip. She wasn’t worried about Corvo liking her monsters, Samuel knew.

Luckily, or maybe unluckily considering the assurances Samuel wanted to give her, Corvo appeared, and he looked almost as bad as he had his second night at the Pits. His hair was stood up all on one side like half a frightened bird, his face was more drawn and hollow and gaunt, eyes deeply, tiredly bruised, and he hadn’t shaved. It was probably beyond him, given the rumpled state of his clothing and the mechanical way he shuffled into the room and slid into his seat in front of them.

“Hello Corvo,” Said Emily; smiling, but not as brightly as she should have been. She nudged Samuel demandingly.

“Morning Corvo,” Said Samuel obligingly, gesturing to the spread of drawings in between their dirty plates that Lydia had yet to clear away from breakfast. “The Lady was just telling me about her plans to keep control of the isles.”

Corvo, head turned at an awkward angle that made a bright, angry welt on the side of his neck stand out in sharp relief - Emily flinched and Samuel _hated_ that she flinched, and so grateful that Corvo didn’t see because he didn’t need that on top of everything else - looked over her plans. _I like the dragons_ , He said, Emily repeating it to an undertone for Samuel to understand too.

“Samuel said you’d like this one,” She added, handing the drawing of the enormous bird to Corvo. He took it as gently as art collectors took early Sokolov works. He tilted his head, bird-like, then smiled his for-Emily smile, the one that deepened the lines at the corners of his eyes.

 _He looks very good, Emily,_ He told her. Emily didn’t say her own name, but Samuel recognised it nevertheless. _I think you do feathers better than Sokolov does._

Emily squirmed modestly, ducking her chin to her chest. “No I don’t. I can never get them right. There’s always too many, and I don’t understand where they should go. You’re not _that_ bad at drawing - I’ve seen the ones you did for mother.”

Corvo lifted his brow, still smiling. _If we go to Karnaca, remind me to look in my mother’s house and I’ll show you the drawings of pigeons I made when I was your age. And the ones for your mother were copies I’d made of some sketches of house-crests, and I traced them from a book. The original ones were awful_. He peered down again at the drawing Emily showed him, his soft grin giving way to a frown as he lay the page flat and pointed at the bird’s face. _Why is he sad?_

Samuel leaned close to see and, yes, the bird was very, very sad. It wore, in fact, the expression Corvo usually had, artfully translated into animal form. Mingled grief and regret, all bundled together with internal suffering and the faint tightness around his mouth that said the scars down his spine and across the tops of his thighs were starting to twinge again. Emily, in a child’s simple style and through the indelicate medium of crayon, had conveyed more nuance in a face than master painters could ever hope to do in decades of study.

Emily leaned back in her seat, palms flat across her knees as she kicked her heels against the seat. “They’re like you,” She finally said, biting her lip. “They like being up high where people can’t see them, and making their enemies go to sleep instead of killing them. And you’re always so _sad_ now, and I know it’s because of mother and everything but you. You’re hurting, aren’t you? That’s why you don’t smile as much now, isn’t it?”

Samuel looked to Corvo, unwilling to butt into the conversation, and the boy looked… He looked like someone had stabbed his spine and the tip had come bursting from his belly. Like one of Emily’s monsters, the rat one with long teeth and longer claws, had come bursting from the page and gutted him.

But he didn’t even try to muster up his usual pacifying smile, or try to deny it. He made a sign, just the one, and Samuel recognised it. _Sorry_ , He said, slumping. He made a few more that Emily repeated under her breath, less for Samuel to understand and more, maybe, for her to. _I’m sorry I frightened you. I didn’t mean to._

Emily swayed unhappily, eyes fixed on Corvo’s miserable, downturned face. “Are you alright?”

Corvo sighed, looked away and across to the bar, but he wasn’t seeing it. _No_ , He said. _I’m not. But I’m a bit better now._

“Oh,” Emily murmured, looking at her hands as she nervously twisted her fingers together. Across the pub Havelock, Pendleton, and Martin were talking with their heads bent together, casting wary glances in Corvo’s direction. “Was it… Was it something I did?”

Corvo shook his head immediately, reaching across the table to take both her hands in one of his own. He squeezed them gently, then let go to speak. _No. You didn’t do anything wrong, I promise. I was just_ \- His hands hovered uncertainly for a moment - _I miss Jessamine, and I’d missed you so much, and I’ve been worried about for months. It’s… hard to remember that you’re safe._

“Because of Coldridge?” Asked Emily quietly. Clever girl. Worryingly astute, but clever.

Corvo nodded, unbuttoning his cuffs to roll the sleeve as far back as his shoulder. Samuel had to give him credit; when he lay his arm flat across the table, he didn’t flinch when Emily touched the ladder of pink scars, that shiny softness of newly revealed skin after a scab dropped off, or when she stroked the manacle scars wrapped around his wrist.

“Are there more?” She asked, with the same kind of morbid curiosity that all children were born with.

For a moment Samuel thought Corvo was going to refuse - he’d closed his eyes against the request and his shoulders were drawn tightly together beneath his shirt, up around his ears in discomfort. But Corvo wouldn’t deny Emily anything, and he unbuttoned and let the shirt slide from his shoulders, most of his scars, for once, publicly bared.

It was… It was uncomfortable to look at, Samuel thought, trying not to. There was something awful about the clinical doling out of pain, the neat patterning across his chest and back. Marbling and stars from electrical wires, lashes long and neat, criss-crossing like the robes of a net. Brandings artlessly applied in their neat rows. There were probably a lot more healed over that would take a braver man than Samuel to look closely for.

Emily, of course, reached out to touch, letting her fingers trail down those horrible marks written across Corvo’s skin. From the thin welts barely scratched across his hairy belly, all the way to the one that split his lip, where it left the faintest indent that showed a hint of the white teeth behind. She put her hand flat on his ribs and felt the way those bones pressed against the inside of his skin with each breath and left deep, hungry gouges in between. Up to the collarbone that showed too strongly, the sharp jaw Samuel half expected to slice her palm. The cut over his eye, splitting his brow in a half-healed line. Peering at the ones on his back that Samuel hadn’t the courage to look too closely at, the few times he’d had the opportunity.

“Corvo?” She said, and Samuel abruptly noticed that Corvo had gone still and lifeless, the faintest frightened tremor making his fists shake on top of his knees. Frightened not of her, but things he’d tried to lock away.

Calmly, ever so calmly, Corvo shook his head at her, and when she slid halfway across the seat back into her place, he pulled his shirt back on and buttoned it all the way to his throat, shrugging back down the sleeve that had ridden up from his wrist. _There are others,_ He said, barely able to make his hands form the signs. _But I don’t want to show those ones here._

“I’m sorry,” Emily mumbled, playing with her fingers. “You didn’t want me to see them, did you? Not like the ones from your soldier days.”

 _I don’t want anyone to see them_ , Answered Corvo, a little more himself now that he was put to rights. _I’d like it if I_ _couldn’t see them_. He sighed then, heavy, as Emily pulled a drawing in front of her face and peered intently at it without really seeing what was on it.

 _You’re allowed to ask, if you want_ , Said Corvo, his face as open and sweet as a flower to the sun. _I might not want to answer, but I don’t mind if you ask._

That, it seemed, was enough to calm Emily; to make her realise that Corvo still wasn’t upset with her, just not as okay as he’d always been before. “I know,” She told him.

Carefully, Corvo lay his hands flat on the table, hiding behind his hair to think. It made Emily look nervous, but it wasn’t the same kind of anxiety she’d had earlier that morning, before Samuel distracted her with talks on her fictional army, so Samuel assumed the careful neutrality of Corvo’s face wasn’t something to worry about. _I love you_ , Said Corvo, _You know that?_

Emily beamed at him like a miniature sun, bright and grinning as she wormed across the seats to burrow into Corvo’s side. Poor Corvo looked caught between surprise and obvious, heartbreaking delight that she had. “Of course I do!” She said, scandalised by the very notion that she didn’t. Emily wrapped around him like an octopus, all clinging arms and legs that refused to let go.

Samuel leaned back in his seat, satisfied that everything was smoothed over, and called Lydia over to give Corvo the food he clearly needed; he’d have a hard time getting to Burrows.


	5. Chapter 5

Corvo, in a burst of magic that smelled like a lightning storm on the open sea, materialised above Samuel’s boat and dropped to its floor as lightly as a bird alighting to a branch. He ripped off the mask and beamed at Samuel; flushed and triumphant, eyes gleaming with wicked, savage amusement as the Lord Regent’s sins rang out through the city. His teeth shone white in the gloom, limned as any blade under the half-light.

He looked like everything the Overseers said to look for in an Outsider worshipper - a magic-user. Unreal, like he was straddling the line between the real world and the Void, his blood singing with the old songs of the whales. Bonecharms hissing boldly from the strap across his chest, wreathed in shadows like some monstrous apparition. An avatar of chaos and change, made of real flesh and blood but inexorably Other.

But Corvo slumped down into the seat, hands trembling a little from exhaustion, and when he gave Samuel a pleased, happy grin that it was all over, Samuel smiled back too. Corvo was still just a man, who told stories to his daughter not with ridiculous accents, but exaggerated character to his hands; he liked blood ox and hated parsnip, ate it regardless because he was hungry and it was improvement over the tins he fished out of bins; played with the white rats who were friendly to him, and never hurt the wolfhounds patrolling the streets. In the Amaranth, drunk on giddiness, he tipped his head close to Samuel’s in the shared joke of Burrows’ true crimes blaring through the speakers after months of Corvo’s imagined ones doing the same.

A man, that was all. Made of chaos, yes, but not the grinning Death whose face he wore, abandoned at the bottom of the boat to leer at the clouds; the Death Havelock would have made him.

Pendleton took him aside, stood outside his humble little shack, when they got back to the Pits. They watched Corvo follow Havelock into the pub, little Emily balanced on his hip, though she was probably a bit old to be carried now judging by the way he swapped her from arm to arm. Corvo tucked his head close to hers, and they both laughed at a joke she told.

“Here,” Said Pendleton, stood close to hide the way his fingers moved the little bottle from his hand to Samuel’s. Corvo was better, but he’d not lost the habit of noticing anything and everything, or looking for threats that weren’t there. Maybe it was just something he’d always had, as inseparable from him as the way he looked like his namesake was inseparable. “Arrived soon after you left. Thought we might have to make do with the rat poison, risk it not working, but… You know what you have to do?”

“Yes sir,” Said Samuel quietly.

He didn’t ask why they wanted to kill him - he suspected it had a lot to do with Corvo bringing back crayons and pencils from all around the city for Emily, and the drawing of him that Corvo kept tucked in a breast pocket over his heart labelled Dad. The pragmatic sort of kindness he showed everyone, fixing things because there was no one else to do it. A woman who sang with the songs of the Void though not half as strongly as Corvo did, with an Overseer brother looming in her shadow, holing up in one of the abandoned apartments for a night toasting their death-faced saviour, and gone for bluer waters in the morning. Emily curled up against Corvo’s back, tracing scars until she fell asleep with her forehead pressed against the top of his spine, looking to him for permission to take a break, a day off, to climb the scaffolding and learn to run across rooftops.

Samuel knew why they wanted him dead. He put the little bottle in his sleeve and followed Pendleton into the bar. Havelock and Martin and Pendleton all bunched together like they thought Corvo was still dangerous to them, ready and willing to cut them down for imagined slights against his child. They certainly should be frightened, Samuel thought sourly, given what they were going to do to him.

Grimly, he listened to them make their speeches and congratulate themselves, genuinely pleased with Corvo’s performance but their eyes lingering too long on the scars, the skin darker than theirs, the sword he was never without. Martin never looked away from the tattoo on the back of Corvo’s hand. Samuel forced a smile for Corvo, hoped it looked just ingenuine enough that he caught what the Loyalists were trying to do to him. Turned his back.

Whiskey, glowing warmly from the clearest glass Samuel could find. Corvo’s favourite, even over the nicer stuff stashed away in Pendleton’s room that Lydia had seen him find and then put back in favour of a biscuit. No matter the finery Jessamine must have surrounded him with, he was still just a street boy from Serkonos. Samuel slipped the bottle of Tyvian poison into his hand; it was strong enough to kill a man of Corvo’s caliber, he knew. More than enough.

He slipped the tiny cork from its narrow throat just enough to pour the poison in, and he stoppered it half-empty. It gleamed like black oil in the green glass. Samuel rolled his shoulder, pretending his arm was stiff, and felt the little bottle slither down his sleeve and bounce from his foot. He kicked it hidden beneath the counter, turned to Corvo with a smile he could barely make. _Don’t drink, don’t drink_ , he hoped his face said.

Corvo’s eyes narrowed at the glass Samuel handed to him, and he paused half an instant as he took a deep, luxurious sniff of the whiskey; as he always did but lingering a little. He’d understood. Martin and Havelock shared a glance; Corvo looked to them as they nervously tried encouraging him, looked to Emily. His face, for an instant, went soft. He drank.

Pendleton let go of the breath he was holding, all at once in a relieved sigh, and badly covered it up with a cheer of congratulations for a well earned victory. Samuel held his, all through Corvo going to Piero and Callista and thank them, exclaiming pride over Emily’s drawing of a whale and kissing her hair farewell as he made for the stairs that led to his room. He watched Corvo stumble and shake his head, suddenly swooning against the doorframe.

Up the stairs, his footsteps light as any cat’s; more silent than the Loyalists huddled together at the end of the bar who may have just killed him, Samuel had _helped_ just kill him sweet Void, what had he done? Emily tried a sip of watery ale and made a face at the taste, let Piero have it instead. Lydia leaned tipsily against Callista, who struggled to manage both her and the young empress who wanted to try Wallace’s clear spirits. She nodded at him when she noticed Samuel trying to catch her eye.

Samuel lingered off to the side of them for long after the others started trailing for their beds. He wondered if he’d feel it when Corvo died, like the chill across his skin when a fire was blown out. Maybe he’d feel nothing, he’d just _know_ that he’d killed one of the few good people left in the world. Or maybe Corvo’s spirit wouldn’t go straight to the Void, back to his god; maybe he’d swoop down the stairs on on a crow’s black wings, snuffing them all out like so many candles. Take their living souls in his beak and crunch down as easily as a raven with a peanut, leave them hollow and mindless as Havelock and Martin and Pendleton had tried to make _him_ mindless, like a weapon.

Havelock curtly motioned them to follow, and Samuel did. Up the stairs, fancying that his feet filled the places Corvo had walked, knowing his shape didn’t fit. Humble men of the river never filled those shoes; he didn’t balance well on solid ground, let alone a lampost lethally tall. He ignored their second, more honest speeches to each other, about how Corvo was a liability and an undue influence over the empress. The justifications all men of ambition said to clear away their own guilt.

When they were gone, quietly smug about their own cleverness, Samuel knelt down by Corvo’s head. Poor boy, he didn’t deserve this. He’d made it to his room fine, but he’d clearly fallen through the threshold - his cheek bloomed with a new bruise, one that was sure to sting for weeks. The poison swam through his veins, made his eyes muddy and indistinct, taking long seconds to focus on Samuel just beside him. They burned with more than the fever sweating his brow. “I’m sorry, Corvo,” Samuel told him. “There was nothing I could do with them watching me. I only gave you half the poison - Outsider willing, you’ll make it through this.”

The burning thing in his eyes went away. That was probably more because he’d passed out for a few moments than understood, but Samuel hoped, even so, that he did.

Corvo was all hollow bones and shadow feathers, his coat padded to make him look bigger than he was, like a fluffed out bird. Despite his height, the whipcord strength of him, Samuel picked him up almost easily. His head lolled worryingly against Samuel’s shoulder, but there wasn’t time to think about that, Samuel didn’t _want_ to think about that, and he carried Corvo through the pub, half expecting Havelock to catch him on the stairs and notice that, _thank fuck_ , Corvo was still breathing, still vaguely lucid as he struggled to make his hands form their signs.

“Easy Corvo,” Samuel told him, looking both ways through the doorway to check the main area was empty. “Easy now, I’ve got you, my friend.”

He crept through the pub, Corvo too heavy and too light in his arms, every squeak and groan of the boards above his head making his heart flinch, each time sending him lurching across the floor in desperate search for a hiding place. But the pub was quiet, too quiet, not even Piero masking Samuel’s footsteps with his late night experiments, and that was worrying him too. If even _Piero_ didn’t have the heart to be up this late, unable to sleep because of the machines that came to him in dreams, then there was more wrongness their leaders would deal than just killing their merciful assassin.

Across the muddy, slippery ground, heart in his throat each time the silt gave way beneath his boot. Glass smashed somewhere across the way, and Samuel froze _no no no no_ , not now, please not now, he had to get Corvo safe - saf _er_ , at least, than this former refuge.

It was only a weeper, shambling and lost, that had knocked over a bottle balanced on a stack of boxes. Samuel let his breath go, hefting Corvo higher in his arms, and waited for the poor thing to leave on its own. Corvo whined deep in his throat, voiceless, with every step Samuel took towards the dock; a little thread of breath that Samuel treasured because _Corvo was alive_ , he was _alive_ and maybe, somewhere, there was mercy in the Outsider and he’d keep his Marked safe.

The Amaranth bobbed nervously in the water, tugging on her moorings in agitation, but it wasn’t to her that Samuel turned. As soon as Pendleton had told him what he was to do, Samuel had scoured the Wrenhaven - its inlets and shores and wide open water - for any abandoned boat he could set Corvo on that would, at least, keep him afloat. With the plague sweeping through the city, he’d found one quickly enough and left it in the shadow of its bigger sister. It was little more than a raft, bilgewater seeping through no matter how many times Samuel had emptied it, but it would serve, by the grace of the Outsider it would serve.

Corvo clutched numbly at his sleeve when Samuel set him down, as comfortably as he could make him. He was trembling, faint convulsions through his weakened body; Samuel tried to remember through a sudden lurch of terror if Tyvian poison did that to people, or if it was Corvo’s body trying and failing to rebel against it. “Easy Corvo,” He said, readjusting the coat so that Corvo wouldn’t catch a chill on top of everything else. After a moment, Samuel wrapped his scarf around Corvo’s head, loose to not smother him but enough, he hoped enough, to keep the worst of the cold and the watching eyes of the river-folk from him. “You’ll be fine. You’re safer out there than with me. Easy now, you’ll make it through this, I know you will. Emily will need you.”

He jammed the tiller so the engine wouldn’t turn and just leave him spinning in the middle of the river, started the motor _why was it so loud_ , and pushed him out into the water. He watched Corvo disappear into the gathering darkness, slipping away and out of sight, for a long while. Like Corvo gifting the Lady Boyle a lethal knife to keep her safe from her new paramour, Samuel hoped he’d done the right thing. He didn’t want to be the most fatal of the long line of wrongs people had done him.

Samuel turned his back to the setting sun, gathered up the bag of supplies he’d prepared and left hidden in his shack, and drove across the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the last of it! One more fic to go from Daud's POV because I love that melodramatic bastard, and Crow will be finished, which I honestly didn't expect I'd do when I started writing it.


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